ABOUT

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The growth of Mumbai has been inextricably linked with the textile mills. In 1854, the first textile mill opened in Bombay. By the 1930s, two-thirds of Bombay’s work force were mill workers, transforming the city into a key industrial hub. A rich social, political and cultural life developed in neighbourhoods across Central Bombay.
The great textile strike in 1982 marked the process of mill closure, as mill owners used this to shut down the industry and shift to more profitable ventures. Over 150,000 workers and many others dependent on them lost their livelihoods and the mill lands were redeveloped primarily into malls, gated housing and corporate spaces.

This web archive of audio-visual and text resources pertaining to the mill lands of Mumbai, its people and their struggles, features:

More than 3 decades after the closure of the mills, ‘GiranMumbai’ is an attempt to serve as a repository of material that not only details the various contestations around the mill lands of Mumbai, but also explores how people have coped with these traumatic changes, and how the cultural spaces of Mill Mumbai have transformed and continue to survive.

From Neighbourhood To Nation: The Rise And Fall Of The Left In Bombay’s Girangaon In The Twentieth Century
by Rajnarayan Chandavarkar
(excerpted from Adarkar, N., & Menon, M. (2004). One Hundred Years One Hundred Voices: The Millworkers of Girangaon: An Oral History. Seagull Books Pvt Ltd.)

If you stand at night on the roof of one of the recent, still under-occupied high-rise buildings erected on the property of a defunct mill in central Bombay and often named with a surreal flourish like Kalpataru Heights, or the Phoenix Towers that sprang from the ashes of a spinning mill, you will be treated to an instructive, indeed, allegorical, view of the city. Immediately at the base of the Heights upon which you stand will be a discernible circle of gloom. Further afield, a mile or two away, whether towards the bustling suburbs to the north or the old town and the business districts to the south, the city will be awash with electric light. As the city’s textile mills have closed down, so the residents of Girangaon are enveloped in darkness in the geographical centre of one of the world’s largest cities.

Two events in recent times have marked the ways in which Bombay’s residents view their city, its culture and character, its position in the wider world and the social and political relations by which it is constituted — the decline and in large measure the closure of the textile industry since the late 1980s and the brutal pogrom against Muslims in December 1992 and January 1993 that followed the destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. Bombay’s prodigious growth in the late nineteenth century and its claim to be a major metropolitan centre has, until recently, been inextricably tied to the rise and growth of the cotton textile industry. The apparently precipitous decline of the industry has not only proved calamitous for some of its residents but has unsettled the city’s sense of its own identity. Read More.

Like cattle herded,
Immigrants from several lands
Move towards the city
Towards the Bigari Naka
Agents bring jobs with their commissions
Or comes along a needy householder.
Women don’t go alone;
They work together
And look after themselves.

They set up shacks
Anywhere…
Raising brick on brick
They build houses for others,
Dig holes,
Haul the muck from the deep manholes.
They live on the margins of the city,
Yet they are no citizens.
They stay for months together
Untouched, neglected…
With faith…
But, for the progress of the city,
Their shacks are demolished the first.

They can’t make sense of the city-dwellers:
Why do they act like strangers?
After doing so much for them,
Why are they so rude?
Clinging to the creek,
Close by the rail sidings
They set up shanties.
From no one knows where,
Towards the wealthy, crowded parts of the town,
They congregate at the Bigari Naka
Again.

(* Bigari Naka is the name given to a street corner where casual labour, skilled and unskilled workers assemble in search of work.)

I walked on despondent… depressed
The roads seemed so desolate
Bearing a paper lantern a man pushed his handcart.
I asked,
“Why are you carrying the light now?”
“Come on sir;
Up ahead darkness would be baring its fangs!”
It was the time Nehru died…!

[Translated by Jatin Wagle from the Marathi collection of poems Maze Vidyapeeth (My University) by Narayan Surve, Popular Prakashan, Mumbai, 1966.
Original title of the poem: ‘Nehru gele tya velchi goshta’, p. 19.]

A Measured Life…

A measured life; at the moment of birth…
Glowed a measured light
Spoke measured words. Whining
Walked the measured track; walked back
To the measured home; lived a measured life
If you traverse the measured path
You’ll attain the heavens, they say! In the four measured pillars
And, I spit on it all.

[Translated by Jatin Wagle from the Marathi collection of poems Maze Vidyapeeth (My University) by Narayan Surve, Popular Prakashan, Mumbai, 1966.
Original title of the poem: ‘Betoon dilele ayushya’, p. 44.]

Papa was talking…
All of us were listening; those at home,
In the chawl, from tomorrow’s world!
The water in the gutters of the chawl was glistening in the floodlights.

“So, I was leading a sea of people…
You know what, son; I went ahead,
Turned at our chawl,
She was standing there at the door,
Something inside me smiled, just like that.
The neighbours whispered,
‘Look, Atmya’s father…a leader’

“You know what, son…
I started growing…became an ocean
I pierced the skies.
You know what, son; I mocked at the towers.
Telegrams arrived from England.
The queen’s minarets went tumbling then, it seems.
A trickle of blood glimmered across the darkness.
Some of us, like a bundle tied tightly, in a van
Passed the chawl once again…
You know what, son…
You were sleeping in your mother’s arms.
When I, too, waved my hand, her expression…

Just about now I walked out of a mehfil
I felt so melancholy, I walked out…
The moon had moved… or I would say…
Turned homewards… or I could say,
Turning melancholy, had got quite soiled.

The day’s flags started fluttering…
Looming up…
Or I would say –
Over the city, over houses, all over…
Started galloping.

Jivba sat at the gate
On a bench
Collecting subscriptions
The lantern burned still…

“Hey Jivba, … how long would you stay up man?”

“We eat fire and shit embers…
So, don’t give us that… okay…”

Really, I don’t want your melancholy nights anymore.
Truly, I don’t.

[Translated by Jatin Wagle from the Marathi collection of poems Jaheernama (Manifesto) by Narayan Surve, Popular Prakashan, Mumbai, 1975.
Original title of the poem: ‘Tumchya tya udas ratri aata mala nakot’, pp. 22.]

Sheegwala

Dawoodchacha

“What’s that you’re writing son?”
“No Chacha… just practising the alphabet.”
Dawoodchacha enters the room
Takes off his bobbled Turkish hat
Wiping the sweat from below his neck, he smokes a bidi
Flops down;
His crutch trips up, stretches out its legs.

“Keep this in mind, son!
It’s so easy to write a word,
And so hard to live for it.

“So, I was saying…
One day I sat in the butcher’s shop
A skinned goat hung from the hook
Suddenly I heard a din nearby
I ran out and saw…
The mob had cornered your mother
Kill her
Said the Allah-ho-Akbar-walas
Beware said I
They laughed, said
He turned out to be a bloody Hinduwala

“So, butcher the kafir
Rose the Allah-ho-wala voice
And, there was a fight
The bastards beat me up so hard
I almost died; lost my leg.
Isn’t it true, Kashibai…?

“So son…
Now man’s lost his worth… and mutton’s become dear
Son, in life now, darkness is everywhere
And, who’s left now
With a heart big enough to live for his word?
Money’s gobbled up everyone.

[Translated by Jatin Wagle from the Marathi collection of poems Jaheernama (Manifesto) by Narayan Surve, Popular Prakashan, Mumbai, 1975.
Original title of the poem: ‘Sheegwala’, pp. 20-1.]

Hark!
In the heights of Mumbai
Malabar Hill, the paradise
The abode of the rich
Abounding with pleasure
And here those living in Parel
Working day and night
Surviving by the sweat of their brow
O listen, o listen ye people!
Trains, cars, planes flying high
The fine horse carriages
on the roads
The coolie’s handcarts
The crowd of bullock carts
The rushing vehicles
All in a jam!

When the stars started dimming,
And the tall sirens began singing,
Turning towards the sounds,
Began the everyday processions.
And, leaving in haste,
She used to keep turning back again and again.
‘Don’t fight’, she used to say tenderly.
Thus, she used to earn her two-penny.

The day before Dashera,
She used to take the five of us along.
We used to roam through all the departments,
Watching the decorations.
What fun we had I just cannot say.
Words fail me.
Playing with the tops and whistles,
Flying the balloons and kites,
We turned into birds.

It so happened once,
They brought her in a car.
Her eyes staring wide open,
Blood streamed out of her mouth.
Her co-worker, Salu drew me close.
I was watching with restless eyes,
Was looking for the roof above.
We were looking for our mother.

That night the five of us crowded together.
Comforted ourselves with the bed-cover,
As though it was our mother.
We had nothing earlier.
Now even our mother was gone.
Trying to stem the flow of tears,
We stayed awake through the night.
Now we were completely destitute.

At the centre of the procession
I held his banner on my shoulders.
Janaki Akka said, “ Know this chap –
This is our Marcus Baba.
He was born in Germany, wrote a sackful of books
And passed away in England.
You know, for a mendicant
All lands are the same…
Like you, he too had four kids.”
Right at my first strike action
I met Marx so…

Later: I was speaking at a meeting,
– So, what’s the cause of this depression?
What’s the source of poverty?
Again, Marx came up; I’ll tell you, he said
And went on speaking incessantly…

Just the other day, he stood listening to the speech at a gate meeting.
I said –
“Now we alone are the heroes of history
And of all the biographies to come too.”
He was the one who clapped loudly then.
Laughing spontaneously, he came forward,
Put his arm around my shoulders and said,
“So, do you write poems or what…?
Great!
I, too, liked Goethe.”

To reassure oneself everyday and live; it’s getting tough…
How far does one console oneself; it’s getting tough…
I soothe and put the howling heart to sleep
Though I see the grain-sack stuffed with sawdust in front of me; to stop; it’s tough.
Live and let live. So, I live: everyday, it’s getting tough…
To deny one’s existence; it’s getting tough…
I understand and convince myself, but even after that if I don’t fall in line…
A lit matchstick won’t fall into the godown, to guarantee this; it’s getting tough.

The struggle for the daily bread is an everyday question
At times outside the door, at times inside
I’m a worker, a flaming sword
Listen, you intellectuals! I’m going to commit a crime.
I’ve suffered, witnessed, explored a bit
The sweet ache of my world lies in it
I’ve messed up, missed out and learnt new stuff
The way I live, that’s the way I’m in words.
Bread’s my first love, I agree, but I need something more
That’s why my world’s casting the royal seal
It’s here that I drop flowers into the palms of my words
It’s here that I give swords into the hands of my words.
I haven’t arrived alone; the epoch’s with me
Beware; this is the beginning of the storm
I’m a worker, a shining sword
Listen, you intellectuals! A crime’s about to happen.